Mélanie Pain

Mélanie Pain, a French singer with close ties to both Nouvelle Vague and Villeneuve, introduced herself as a solo artist via the 2009 album My Name. Raised in Aix-en-Provence, France, she lists Sonic Youth, the Smiths, Pixies, PJ Harvey, and Nick Drake among her key influences. Initial recognition arrived through her vocal work on M83’s Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (2003), where she performed on “Run Into Flowers,” “0078h,” and “Beauties Can Die.” The next year she joined the self-titled debut by the 1980s-revival collective Nouvelle Vague, headed by Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux, interpreting P.I.L.’s “This Is Not a Love Song” and the Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks.” Around the same period she partnered with Benoît de Villeneuve on First Date (2005), his first album under the Villeneuve name, taking lead vocals on most of its tracks. Subsequent collaborations followed, above all her sustained work with Nouvelle Vague. On the group’s second album, Bande à Part (2006), she sang five songs, among them covers of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and New Order’s “Blue Monday.” For their third album, 3 (2009), she delivered Depeche Mode’s “Master and Servant” with Martin Gore and Echo & the Bunnymen’s “All My Colours” with Ian McCulloch. After signing with the Parisian label Cinq 7, Pain released My Name in 2009, her first full-length solo project, a collection of folk-pop chansons in English and French, most of them co-written by Villeneuve. “Ignore-moi” served as the promotional single.